By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Earth and her humanity need old forests to exist. And all enabling their destruction, including potential carbon markets paying for 'sustainable forest management' in primary forests, are legitimate targets for an Earth Revolution.

For too long those feeding upon the trough of "sustainable" forestry have been perpetuating the myth that primary and old growth forests can and should be harvested using "Sustainable Forest Management" (SFM) techniques. Old Forests are key to ecosystem, biodiversity, human and the Earth System's survival. Along with other intact natural terrestrial, aquatic and marine habitats; old forests are the internal organs of the Planet and regulate the Earth System to maintain conditions conducive to life. Primary forests logged for the first time are permanently ecologically damaged in terms of composition, structure, function and dynamics.

I am stunned, dumfounded and enraged at the wholesale selling out of the climate and forest, led by big environmental NGOs (BINGOs). The latest positive idea for an ecologically sustainable Earth -- Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Diminishment (REDD) -- to pay for ancient forest protection with carbon monies, is at this very moment being watered down to mean business as usual first time logging of primary forests that forever destroys ecosystems and habitats. Like "sustainable development" and "certified forestry", the REDD concept of paying for protection of old forests' carbon stores, biodiversity and ecosystem is being taken over by industry.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Old Forests, REDD Rage and Earth Revolution" »

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TAKE ACTION!

The mighty Mekong River [search] in Southeast Asia faces a devastating threat from eleven new proposed dams. If even one of the dams are built in Cambodia, Laos or Thailand; they would block major fish migrations and otherwise ecologically disrupt this vitally important river, placing at risk millions of people who depend upon the Mekong for their food security and income. Help "Save the Mekong" and this affinity campaign in seeking to pressure regional governments to shelve the plans.

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By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Let me tell you about the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees. THEY ARE ALL DYING. Global grassroots protest action -- informed by ecological science, impassioned by green rage, and dedicated to sufficient policies to achieve global ecological sustainability -- our last best chance, together, to avoid ecocide.

FOREWARD: For the past two months Ecological Internet has been micro-blogging on Twitter http://twitter.com/ecointernet (as well as at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecological-Internet/84943913664 on Facebook) regarding requirements for ecological sustainability [search]. Being forced to capture complex ideas in 140 characters has been good for our biocentric writing by enforcing brevity. Ends up the series of one-liners string together relatively well to present a compelling vision of what is necessary to protect Gaia and our beings.

From these terse pronouncements comes a sense of planetary urgency. As we ponder whether there are enough funds for Ecological Internet to continue to use the Internet to facilitate global ecological sustainability, and consider cutting back or even closing (and whether our "public radio" type funding appeals remain a viable funding method), this twitter compilation is one means to make a compelling case for you to support our unique brand of global grassroots eco-advocacy.

Your support broadcasts such biocentric thought and action 24/7 to an ecologically hungry world -- as our portals and writings are used and read by several million people a year. Please enjoy this essay and donate now. Together we will make it.

For Earth,
Dr. Glen Barry
****************************************

(EARTH) - Gaia. Earth is alive. Biosphere is self-regulating. Interactions between ecosystems make Earth habitable. Gaia once vibrant is in mid-death swoon. Humans. Are killing. Gaia. Earth is faced with global ecological collapse, this is an unprecedented emergency, and threatens major upheaval and death of all. Wake up you bloody fools. Earth is dying. We are losing our habitat. Humanity is in deep shit as Earth well past carrying capacity. We and all Gaia's creatures are heading for mass extinction. Radical idealism that profoundly transforms humanity's relationship to natural being is the cure to ecocide.

Things are not as they ought to be. Humans dismantle natural ecosystems that are their habitats because they like making money more than truth, justice, equity and continued shared being. We spew into our air, excrete into water, piss in our oceans and foul the land for a pocket full of mumbles and throw-away consumer junk. All but a few are able to overcome their childhood indoctrination and limited lifespan to see this is not how life was meant to be, that humanity has morphed into a disease upon Gaia. Yet as our atmosphere collapses, water grows dear, and extreme poverty epidemic; more are realizing that something has gone dramatically wrong with the human project.

Gaia, the Earth System, is alive and self-regulating. Gaia is a super-organism, and as such can die. There is no guarantee of continued evolution after ecosystem collapse. Being can end. Humans are one with Earth and as goes Gaia's health goes ours being. Being is fragile. The biosphere is a thin mantle of life upon otherwise lifeless rock. These ecosystems are more than resources, they give life. All Gaia's life including us is crashing. Humans appear hell-bent to destroy life's biological foundation. Earth going bad with industrial agricultural, dead oceans, strip malls, toxic cocktail, climate weirding and logging old forests. Pandemic disease stalks an overpopulated, poverty wracked and ecologically devastated Earth. Factory farms breed disease sold as food. All must change, be restored.

Global inequity in wealth and standard of living is evil. Malignant consumerism devours Earth's being and the only profits to be seen are false. About 2 billion live on under $2/day and 2 billion in relative opulent luxury. These disparities are unsustainable and must end. Our and all creatures' being imperiled as human disease overwhelms all naturalness. Ecological fabric of being unraveling, daily news full of ecosystems failing, yet few put it together. We and our planet are needlessly dying now. Over-consumption from ecosystem liquidation by some while others starve root cause of ecosystem collapse, war and injustice

Continued being depends upon escalating protest action. For humanity's shared survival we must broaden our sphere of love and emotional support to include Gaia, all her creatures and the human family. Time for action is now. There is nothing wrong with Earth System that a good healthy dose of radical idealism can't fix. It's simple: humanity cutting and burning Earth to death. These practices must end. We can and must stop coal, logging, tar sands, industrial agriculture, war and poverty. There exists a global ecological imperative to protect and restore whole Earth as our garden. Either you are committed to stopping ecocide or you are the problem.

Only road to ecological sustainability is immediate industrial powerdown, and ecological protection and restoration. Time to level with global citizens -- fighting climate change raises energy prices and requires substantial personal sacrifice. The option is apocalyptic planetary disintegration. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an urgent planetary necessity whether or not it creates jobs as techno-optimists claim. Shame on people, and there are many, who put their opulent consumption and luxury ahead of needs of Earth and the poor. Fatal flaw in Western exceptionalism is its use as justification to overconsume. Climate change and sustainability require simpler lives. How much is enough?

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Radical Idealism: Come Home to Gaia" »

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Peru's army is poised to deploy in the Amazon rainforest [ark] to lift blockades across rivers and roads by indigenous people opposed to oil, gas, logging and mining projects. The Peruvian rainforest [search] is the largest swath of Amazon outside Brazil. Ecology and culture are at stake as government plans to exploit 70% of the rainforest for oil, gas and timber.

In the past two years the government has signed deals with multinationals to open swaths of rainforest, including a £1.3bn agreement last month with the Anglo-French oil company Perenco. About 65 tribes have mobilised 30,000 people to disrupt roads, waterways and pipelines, leading to skirmishes with police. Up to 41 vessels serving energy companies are stuck along jungle rivers, paralysed by the protests. These brave souls need and deserve our support.

By Rainforest Rescue with Ecological Internet

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By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

If Gaia, the Earth System, is alive, then it stands to reason she can die. And the fact Gaia has not yet succumbed in past mass extinctions is no indication, and certainly no guarantee, that when hit simultaneously, in a geological flash of time -- with climate change, deforestation, toxics, soil loss, scarce freshwater, dead oceans and more; caused primarily by over-population and inequitable consumption -- that Gaia will not pass from being.

The degree to which humanity has changed Gaia's balance ecologically is clearly known by global change and ecological science, yet it is not well appreciated by most of the masses and ruling elite. Until it is, humanity and our sister species are careening towards global ecosystem collapse, where one day soon we will wake up on a toxic, largely lifeless planet and it will be too late.

If all entreaties to power to pursue necessary policies to avoid global ecosystem collapse continue to be rebuffed, there is a long tradition of protest culminating in revolution to draw upon as inspiration for a Stewardship Revolution. We need to steel ourselves to the possibility that environmentalism in the face of continued neglect by the ruling elite has become a battle for shared survival of our and all being.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Only Cure for a Dying Earth May Be a Stewardship Revolution" »

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PRESS/SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASE

Over-developed, over-populated, and land and water scarce Asian and Middle East nations embark upon global land grab to produce food and agrofuels; threatening global human rights, rainforest and other natural ecosystems, and regional and global ecological sustainability. Deadly global ecological issues require global citizens to unite in escalating protest action!

By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI)
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

Relatively rich countries in Asia and the Middle East, short of food and water at home, have leased or purchased more than 20 million hectares of farmland in Africa and Latin America, equal to 25 percent of Europe's farmland. This global "land grab" by foreign governments and companies is a result of last year's food crisis and a shortage of arable land and water. About one-quarter of these investments are for biofuel plantations [search]. Ecological Internet's current global campaign against Malaysian oil palm plantations in the Amazon rainforests [1] fits within the context of this larger trend.

Malaysia‘s federal land agency will soon break ground on a joint venture with a Brazilian firm to establish 30,000-100,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in the heart of Brazil's Amazon rainforest. Sime Darby, a Malaysian palm oil producer, will invest $800 million for 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of palm oil and rubber plantations in Liberia. "It is increasingly difficult to acquire arable plantation land in Asia and thus it is imperative that new frontiers be sought to meet increasing demand," said Ahmad Zubir Murshid, chief executive of Sime Darby. "Sime Darby will also have the first mover advantage over future entrants into Liberia in terms of securing choice land."

"This flood of land grabs by emerging nations, mostly of land under local customary land tenure, is eerily reminiscent of past and ongoing European and U.S. colonial practices," states Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet's President, who is a practicing Political Ecologist and hold a Ph.D. in Land Resources. "We are witnessing the intensification of social turmoil caused by climate change, land and water scarcity, and over-population and inequitable consumption. Until these root causes of global ecosystem collapse are addressed, there is no chance of achieving equitable and just global ecological sustainability."

Continue reading "RELEASE: Malaysia's Global Oil Palm Rainforest Land Grab Just the Beginning of Larger Land and Water Scarcity Issues" »

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By Rainforest Rescue with Ecological Internet

Malaysia's government owned and subsidized oil palm cooking oil and biofuel industry -- the scourge of Asia and the world's rainforests -- is continuing to expand, this time into the heart of the Brazilian Amazon

BRIEF BACKGROUND:
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW: Malaysia‘s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) will soon break ground on a joint venture with a Brazilian firm to establish 30,000-100,000 hectares (ha; 75,000 – 250,000 acres) of oil palm plantations in the heart of Brazil's Amazon rainforest. Similar oil palm development continues to devastate Asia-Pacific's rainforests, and increasingly the world, with some thirty square miles of carbon and biodiversity rich habitat being cleared a day to provide cooking oil and transport biodiesel. Oil palm agrofuel is heralded as a climate change mitigation measure, yet the initial rainforest clearance leads to much more carbon release than its production and use avoids.

Large scale biofuel production runs counter to urgently addressing climate change and threatens to cause more deforestation, hunger, human rights abuses, and degradation of soil and water. Global ecological sustainability and local well-being depend critically upon ending all industrial development in the world's remaining old forests -- including plantations, logging, mining and dams. The amount of primary and old growth forests that have been lost has already overshot the carrying capacity of Earth. Globally there are not enough old forests to maintain climatic and hydrological cycles, meet local forest dwellers' needs, and to maintain ecosystems and the biosphere in total. Local peoples must be assisted to fully protect, restore and benefit from intact, standing forests.

TAKE ACTION!

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By Rainforest Rescue with Ecological Internet

No Biomass/No Burning! Truly renewable energy must be defined as including no energy production or climate mitigation claims from food based agrofuels, live plants and ecosystems, or burning biomass of any type.

TAKE ACTION HERE NOW! As the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is belatedly gaining recognition within the United States, a suite of policy initiatives, including the Markey-Waxman "American Climate and Energy Security Act 2009" (ACESA), are being considered that promote biomass such as tree plantations, and forest and agricultural 'waste', as renewable energy. Given well known issues of sustainability regarding industrial agriculture and land mismanagement, the need to more clearly define just what "renewable" means is clearly shown. It is vitally important that renewable energy be defined, within the context of federal energy and climate policy, in strictly ecological sustainability terms, including renewable energy and low carbon fuel standards.

In an alarming trend, burning and refining of plant biomass and also toxic municipal waste (or for that matter anything that burns) is being falsely promoted as renewable and of benefit to reducing emissions that cause climate change. Humans already consume a large amount of the energy represented in annual biological growth. To try to consume more of Earth's primary productivity is clearly unsustainable land use. Even partial replacement of fossil fuels with fresh plant biomass energy is absolutely impossible for more than a few years. Trying will denude Earth and make a very different planet, that is hostile and uninhabitable to human life. TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

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TAKE ACTION! Let California Air Resources Board know all industrially produced biofuel crops from live biomass [search], edible or not, still require land, soil, water, fertilizer and other finite inputs. It is clear that industrial biofuels are not "renewable energy" given that these inputs are all in limited supply, and indirect land uses lead to destruction of soil and forest carbon sinks elsewhere.

Regulators at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) are poised later this week to declare that biofuel from corn ethanol [search] cannot help the state address climate change. In assessing the true environmental cost of corn ethanol, it was found this biofuel is worse than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered. This is because as with all monocultures, corn ethanol for biofuels lead to numerous other indirect land use changes. Increased industrial agriculture results in rising land pressures and the loss of soil and forest carbon sinks elsewhere. Such a declaration disallowing corn ethanol biofuel from counting as emissions reductions would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States and would likely set a national precedent.

Ecological Internet and Rainforest Rescue are concerned with America's growing ethanol industry, and the precedent it sets for massive agricultural industrialization of the world's remaining rainforests and other natural wildlands. Please call upon the CARB to heed the overwhelming evidence that agrofuels worsen climate change through further deforestation and the destruction of other soils and ecosystems, drive food prices up, force more people worldwide into hunger, malnutrition and landlessness; and decimate biodiversity and ecosystems. TAKE ACTION!

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Australia must stop being a climate change laggard. Given severe drought and massive wildfires, the Rudd Government's target to reduce carbon emissions by 5% by 2020 is dangerously insufficient.

TAKE ACTION! The Australian government is failing to establish and implement a rigorous climate change policy adequate to respond to the global climate emergency. The Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) [search] aims to cut emissions by 5 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050. The Government’s cowardly response to its greatest challenge has been explicitly condemned by climate scientists and implicitly condemned by devastating bushfires which killed 200 people.

Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world, and their economy is based heavily upon the deadly coal fossil fuel industry which exerts undue political influence. Unsustainable Australian lifestyles including native forest clearing and wasteful water use threaten their continent's fragile ecosystems, and the drought and intensified bushfires are a precursor of Australian and global ecosystem collapse to come.

Given imminent strengthened regulation of greenhouse gases in the United States and Europe, it is time for Australia to embrace sufficient climate change policies including committing to ambitious targets that will require ending its use and export of coal, and stopping native forest clearing. TAKE ACTION!

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